Translation Into English
Starting with poet Jibanananda Das himself, Banalata Sen has been translated into English by many hands. They include Martin Kirkman, one with the initials S.D., Puroshuttam Das together with Shamosri Das, P. Lal, Mary Lago in collaboration with Tarun Gupta, Pritish Nandy, Chidananda Dasgupta, Ananda Lal, Clinton B. Seely, Sukanta Chaudhuri, Anupam Banerjee, Hayat Saif, Faizul Latif Chowdhury, Fakrul Alam, Anjana Basu, Joe Winter, Ron. D K Banergjee, Joydeep Bhattacharya, Arun Sarker, Amitabha Mukerjee, Santanu Sinha Chaudhuri and Shamik Bose. A comparison of the translations reflect difference in understanding and interpretation as perceived by the translators. In certain points, interpretation by the translator differs from that of the poet himself, as reflected in his own translation.
It is interesting to note one instance where all translators, except one, have decidedly diverted from the temporal sense of the text. The first line haajaar bochor dhore aami path haatitechi prithibir pothey is in present perfect continuous tense. Most translations have rendered this either into simple past tense or present perfect tense. Oblivious of the continuity of the act Martin Kirkman translated : A thousand years I have wandered upon the earth. Amitabha Mukerjee translated : A thousand years I have walked these paths. Sukanta Chaudhuri rendered : I have walked the roads across the earth’s breast for a thousand years. Ananda Lal also used present perfect tense : I have walked the paths of earth for thousands of years. Now the translation by Joydeep Bhattacharya : I have walked earth’s byways for millennia. Fakrul Alam followed suit by writing : For a thousand years I have walked the ways of the world.
On the contrary Clinton B. Seely used simple past tense : For thousands of years I roamed the paths of this earth. Joe Winter translated : For thousands of years Earth’s path has been my path. This is in line with Jibanananda Das himself who translated like : Long I have been a wanderer of this world. Anjana Basu's translation is not comparable here and hence excluded.
It is Anupam Banerji who maintained the literal sense of the poem (1998) and wrote in translation : For ages I have been walking the paths of this earth. This is partially echoed in translation by Faizul Latif Chowdhury who rendered it like : It has been a thousand years since I started trekking the earth. However, a recent translation by Arun Sarkar again considers present perfect continuous tense : For thousand years I have been walking all over the world.Recently, a translation by Shamik Bose, runs like 'For a thousand years I have been walking upon the bosom of my earth' .
It is interesting to note that, in 2008, Clinton B. Seely improved on his original translation and used present perfect continuous tense.
Read more about this topic: Banalata Sen
Famous quotes containing the words translation and/or english:
“To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.”
—Paul Goodman (1911–1972)
“Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?”
—Alan Jay Lerner (1918–1986)